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Friday, October 7, 2011

It's quite sad that the new iPhone 4S launch will now forever be associated with Steve Job's death.
But, let's see what the new iPhone 4S has to offer, and if it will be able to keep up the not-that-easy task of being the most successful smartphone on the market.

iPhone 4S - The Best iPhone ever?

Lots of people felt disappointed for not having a brand new design. But, if you stop to think about it, this is exactly what happened with the iPhone 3G and 3GS... and we all know just how well the 3GS did.

However, on the inside, the 4S has nothing to do with the current iPhone 4. We now get the dual-core A5 CPU found on the iPad, twice as fast and with 7x faster graphics. That should be enough to tackle the dual-core Android competition for a while (although performance must always be kept in check with battery life - no use in having lots of dual/quad-core power in your smartphone if you can't even use it for an entire day).

Next, we also get a new and improved 8MP camera (check the sample photos), that also should be able to stand its ground against the best of the best.

If you think about it, this would indeed be the logical move for Apple, no matter just how much people would "wish" for something truly amazing and revolutionary. Other than including heat-vision, or x-ray vision, or blood pressure sensors, I really can't say what people could expect to be "revolutionary" on smartphones.

As for NFC... what's the point in adding something you can't really use for the foreseeable future, no matter what they might want us to believe?

Regarding the screen size, that's a matter of personal taste. I find the current iPhone size to be quite adequate, and the 4,3" screens to be the biggest I'd be willing to tolerate. However, there are those that welcome 4.5 and even 5" screen as being the "perfect" size. More so, don't forget that those Super Amoled screen sizes are only that big because... they can't yet make them any smaller! So, it's really not a matter of "choice", but a manufacturing constraint.

iOS5

Lots of the new stuff that we'll see in the iPhone 4S arrives via the new and improved IOS5 and will be freely available to iPhones going back to the 3GS (over 2 years old now - also, something Android smartphone makers should learn to do... go check any 2 year old Android and see if you can get it to run an official Android 2.3 update - not that it's actually Google's fault).

The new iOS is also better than never - though not perfect, we'll get back to that when it's available next Oct 12th - and comes with a revamped notification system (long overdue!), iCloud, PC-Free (also one of my favorites!), and even a Find My Friends geo-location system (kind of Google's Latitude), among hundreds of other small/medium/major improvements.

Siri

But, for revolutionary stuff, we have to turn to Siri, the new iPhone Virtual Assistant. Better than trying to explain what's about, better watch the following video.

Yes, you can now simply talk to your iPhone, and have a "conversation" with it. This is the kind of stuff that will forever change the way we interact with computer devices - I just can't figure out why this kind of thing hasn't been around for years on desktop computers (they can't say it's due to lack of computer power, can they?)

Unfortunately, it's still English/french/German-only for now, and also restricted to the iPhone 4S. Considering Siri first showed up running on iPhone 3GS nearly 2 years ago... I can't imagine they wouldn't be able to make it work at least in the iPhone 4... hummm...

But I guess, now that the "cat is out of the box", the same kind of technology will soon be pursued by Google and MS, and it will soon be available not only in Smartphones, but every other kind of devices as well.
Just imagine what this kind of tech could do for disabled person's computer interaction!

Prices

The new iPhone 4S will be available on Oct 14th, (pre-orders start tomorrow, Oct 7th) and start at $199.
The old iPhone 3GS can now be had for free, and a downsized 8GB iPhone 4 drops to $99.
All things considered, I think the new iPhone 4S is still the one to get... And I'm sure people will still line up like crazy to get on, even more so now that there's a tragic event that will certainly help "bond" Apple fans all over the world.